Because if data-viz is actually your goal, and not a secondary aspect of your work, then you SHOULD read tons of tutorials and learn the low level workings.
The advice the parent gave is meant for people working on projects where visualization is important. Not for those just needing to show a few plots quikcly in some other kind of project.
If you work is heavy on data-viz then you very much should read into all this. The same way we wouldn't consider someone a programmer if he just bought some shrinked wrapped software and installed it.
Plus the "needlessly complex" accusation is total BS. In fact it's considered one of the best designed APIs by most experienced developers -- check the interwebs for references to that, and is amazingly coherent, giving you only what you need for any specific problem, instead of forcing you to tons of boilerplate or irrelevant trivia.
I'll give it another shot (I have to for my current project) -- but I don't think my initial assessment is "total BS".
I understood what D3 was doing under the hood, and experienced a lot of friction/confusion when I needed to build and manipulate a specific SVG tree structure.
The fact that D3 expects me to understand the low-level SVG structure and yet provides me with a model that doesn't intuitively mesh with this model is the source for most of my confusion and frustration, I expect.
The advice the parent gave is meant for people working on projects where visualization is important. Not for those just needing to show a few plots quikcly in some other kind of project.
If you work is heavy on data-viz then you very much should read into all this. The same way we wouldn't consider someone a programmer if he just bought some shrinked wrapped software and installed it.
Plus the "needlessly complex" accusation is total BS. In fact it's considered one of the best designed APIs by most experienced developers -- check the interwebs for references to that, and is amazingly coherent, giving you only what you need for any specific problem, instead of forcing you to tons of boilerplate or irrelevant trivia.